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Murphys, California
Murphys, originally Murphys New Diggings then Murphy's Camp, is an unincorporated village located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in Calaveras County, California, United States. The population was 2,213 at the 2010 census, up from 2,061 at the 2000 census. A former gold mining settlement, the main street today is lined with over two dozen wine tasting rooms and surrounded by local vineyards. Nearby attractions include Calaveras Big Trees State Park, Bear Valley Ski Resort and historic Mercer Caverns. The world's largest crystalline gold leaf is displayed just south of town at Ironstone Vineyards. The town also hosts an annual Irish Day parade and street fair every March on Main Street, with some years seeing over 35,000 people in attendance. History The area around Murphys was originally occupied by the Miwok. John and Daniel Murphy were part of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party, the first immigrant party to bring wagons across the Sierra Nevada to Sutter's F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Census Designated Place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such as self-governing city (United States), cities, town (United States), towns, and village (United States), villages, for the purposes of gathering and correlating statistical data. CDPs are populated areas that generally include one officially designated but currently unincorporated area, unincorporated community, for which the CDP is named, plus surrounding inhabited countryside of varying dimensions and, occasionally, other, smaller unincorporated communities as well. CDPs include small rural communities, Edge city, edge cities, colonia (United States), colonias located along the Mexico–United States border, and unincorporated resort and retirement community, retirement communities and their environs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercer Caverns
Mercer Caverns is a show cave located one mile north of Murphys in Calaveras County California. It is named after the gold prospector Walter J. Mercer who discovered the caves around 1885 and filed a claim. The caverns have a large number of speleothems, stalactites, and stalagmites. It is formed in a marble unit known as the Calaveras Formation. It also contains a large display of aragonite frostwork. The standard tour of the cave descends 160 feet, 208 steps down and 232 up in a traverse between the natural and an artificial entrance. The cave was mapped in 1986 to a length of 3389 feet and a total depth of 192 feet. The map can be viewed on the cave's web site. Images File:California-Murphys-Mercer cave1.jpg, File:California-Murphys-Mercer cave2.jpg, See also * Stalagmite * Stalactite A stalactite (, ; , ) is a mineral formation that hangs from the ceiling of caves, hot springs, or man-made structures such as bridges and mines. Any material that is soluble and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver
Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. Silver is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native metal, native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc Refining (metallurgy), refining. Silver has long been valued as a precious metal. Silver metal is used in many bullion coins, sometimes bimetallism, alongside gold: while it is more abundant than gold, it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is typically measured on a per-mille basis; a 94%-pure alloy is described as "0.940 fine". As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had an enduring role in most human cultures. Other than in currency and as an in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merchant
A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated in ancient Babylonia, Assyria, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, Phoenicia and Rome. During the European medieval period, a rapid expansion in trade and commerce led to the rise of a wealthy and powerful merchant class. The European Age of Discovery opened up new trading routes and gave European consumers access to a much broader range of goods. By the 18th century, a new type of manufacturer-merchant had started to emerge and modern business practices were becoming evident. The status of the merchant has varied during different periods of history and among different societies. In modern times, the term ''merchant'' has occasionally been used to refer to a businessperson or someone undertaking activities (commercial or industrial) for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boomtown
A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although the term can also be applied to communities growing very rapidly for different reasons, such as a proximity to a major metropolitan area, large infrastructure projects, or an attractive climate. First boomtowns Early boomtowns, such as Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester, experienced a dramatic surge in population and economic activity during the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th century. In pre-industrial England these towns had been relative backwaters, compared to the more important market towns of Bristol, Norwich, and York, but they soon became major urban and industrial centres. Although these boomtowns did not directly owe their sudden growth to the discovery of a local natural resource, the factories were set up there to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Muir
John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the national park, National Parks", was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States. His books, letters and essays describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to his wife and the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in ''The Century Magazine'', "The Treasures of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giant Sequoia
''Sequoiadendron giganteum'' (also known as the giant sequoia, giant redwood, Sierra redwood or Wellingtonia) is a species of coniferous tree, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae. Giant sequoia specimens are the largest trees on Earth. They are native to the groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada mountain range of California but have been introduced, planted, and grown around the world. The giant sequoia is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN with fewer than 80,000 remaining in its native California. The tree was introduced to the U.K. in 1853, and by now might have 500,000 trees growing there where it is more commonly known as Wellingtonia after the Duke of Wellington. The giant sequoia grow to an average height of 50–85 m (164–279 ft) with trunk diameters ranging from 6–8 m (20–26 ft). Record trees have been measured at 94.8 m (311&nbs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placer Mining
Placer mining () is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment. Placer mining is frequently used for precious metal deposits (particularly gold) and gemstones, both of which are often found in alluvial deposits—deposits of sand and gravel in modern or ancient stream beds, or occasionally glacial deposits. The metal or gemstones, having been moved by stream flow from an original source such as a vein, are typically only a minuscule portion of the total deposit. Since gems and heavy metals like gold are considerably denser than sand, they tend to accumulate at the base of placer deposits. Placer deposits can be as young as a few years old, such as the Canadian Queen Charlotte beach gold placer deposits, or billions of years old like the Elliot Lake uranium paleoplacer within the Huronian Supergroup in Canada. The containing material in an alluvial placer mine may be too lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vallecito, California
Vallecito ( Spanish for "Little Valley") is a census-designated place (CDP) in Calaveras County, California, United States. The population was 442 at the 2020 census, exactly the same as at the 2010 census. The town is registered as California Historical Landmark #273. Nearby is Moaning Cavern, the largest cave chamber in California, which the Miwok Indians used as a burial ground. History Vallecito was one of California's important early-day mining towns. Gold was discovered here by the Murphy brothers in 1849, and it was originally called "Murphys Diggings," which became "Murphys Old Diggings" when they moved on to greener pastures at "Murphys New Diggings" (which became the town of Murphys). The town was revitalized in 1852 when extremely rich deposits of gold were discovered running practically through the center of town. A post office was established in 1854, which is still in use today. The Vallecito Bell, cast at Troy, New York in 1853, was brought around Cape Horn. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
California Gold Rush
The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to grow rapidly into statehood in the Compromise of 1850. The gold rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide. The effects of the gold rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, nicknamed "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for gold rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America in late 1848. Of the approx ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sutter's Fort
Sutter's Fort was a 19th-century agricultural and trade colony in the Mexican ''Alta California'' province. Established in 1839, the site of the fort was originally part of a utopian colonial project called New Helvetia (''New Switzerland'') by its builder John Sutter, though construction of the fort proper would not begin until 1841. The fort was the first non-Indigenous community in the California Central Valley, and saw grave mistreatment of Indigenous laborers in plantation or feudal style conditions. The fort is famous for its association with the Donner Party, the California gold rush, and the formation of the city of Sacramento, surrounding the fort. It is notable for its proximity to the end of the California and Siskiyou Trails, which it served as a waystation. In modern times, the adobe structure has been restored to its original condition () and is now administered by California Department of Parks and Recreation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
